


The Truth I Will Now Tell

by Leara



Series: Trouble in Toronto [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blackhill AU, Detective AU, F/F, F/M, blackhill - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 09:55:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3605868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leara/pseuds/Leara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria Hill was a young parol officer and Natasha was too tied up with the Bratva. And yet somehow, the intriguing, bull-headed brunette convinced Natasha to turn coats and become a cop. And ever since, Natasha has caused Maria's emotions to become a rollercoaster that even her commitment issues are challenged by. Between whipping bullets and undercover missions, the two detectives are eventually paired and must work out their feelings. </p><p>A series of drabbles spanning a decade from when Maria first meets Natasha and is captured by the feisty street kid.</p><p>Story is inspired by RP threads on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 5 Times Natasha Walked Away and the One Where Maria Didn’t Let Her

The first time, they’re both wearing uniforms and Natasha’s lips stray Maria’s briefly. Their eyes lock before Maria looks away and clears her throat. Natasha tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, masking her disappointment in a shrug. She backs away from the doorway to Maria’s building, flashes her a casual grin and turns her back before Maria can recover and see the slightly hurt look of an admirer. Because they’re friends and friends don’t kiss each other like that. The next day, Natasha acts like nothing happened and Maria accepts what happened as the result of endorphins or some biological remnant from chasing a guy for three blocks. 

The second time, they don’t have the uniforms to blame. Maria has just been promoted and won’t see a uniform again. Natasha is proud and Maria is taken by the moment. They order Chinese for old times sake and sit by the coffee shop on Second. It feels strange and Natasha remembers that night two years back where she felt soft lips against hers and congratulates her partner for making detective. She’s earned it and the streets will be safer in a different way with Maria working Narcotics. The promotion stings a bit, but it’s never been about Natasha, and so she smiles and makes nice because damn Maria Hill is going to put bad guys behind bars in a way that a patrol officer never could. She cracks joke like she always has in her casual manner that hides all of their insecurities and tells her that she better not grow comfortable working undercover as a hooker. When they depart, Natasha knows she is not going to see Hill for a while—precincts apart, like they haven’t been for three years—and Maria knows it, too, because she doesn’t protest when Natasha leans in, kisses her, and says, “Liked you better in the blues, Hill.”

They are in a bar and it is getting later than it should be—what the hell, it’s not like they’ve got family to worry about (Maria’s is dead, or as good as, and the same counts for Natasha’s, with the exception of a great-aunt somewhere)—and they are on their seventh consecutive drink.  
“Undercover?” Maria says in disbelief, not quite believing it even though it’s the second time Natasha tells her. For some reason, Maria is still the person she calls upon these kinds of news.  
“Yes,” a drunken Natasha verifies, resting the edge of the beer—because it’s back to basics at this point—bottle’s mouth against her lips, pretending not to have seen how her lips seem to be the only part of her that Maria can focus on at this point in time.  
“Damn. And you’re sure I can’t see--?”  
“No!” Natasha exclaims, unsure why the fervor.  
“And here we were thinking I’d get to be the undercover hooker. Hey, what about—“  
“ _No pictures_.”  
“Aw, Romanov, you used to be fun.”  
_You used to have my back._  
“It’s getting late,” Natasha stated, getting up and gathering her jacket from the back of the stool. “And I _am_ fun.”  
“Prove it,” challenges Maria in what is sure to be discarded as intoxicated playfulness later.  
And Natasha does. And all that goes through Maria’s head afterwards is that people might believe it little too well that Natasha kisses for a living—because Maria might actually want to do that again someday. However, nothing good will ever come from having Natasha Romanov’s kisses as her guilty pleasures—she respects their friendship too much for that. _Then why can’t she stop touching her lips after a certain redhead kissed them?_

The fourth time is after Natasha has made detective and they work together. It’s not their first case and they have been partners for little over a month when a guy makes a downright creepy pass at Maria, and Natasha realizes how stupid she has been. It’s not jealousy, she argues; it’s protectiveness because she sees Maria _flinch_. Maria Hill doesn’t flinch and she doesn’t allow sleekly club owners to get to her and the day after, she will probe at Maria and demand an explanation until she’ll crack and snap at her, but Natasha’s immediate response isn’t tease or friendly mockery, it’s to pull Maria close as they depart across the dance floor and kiss her, right on the lips.  
Somehow, it’s fierce and it’s staking her claim and not letting the guy get to her. But it’s also selfish, and Natasha isn’t quite sure how to feel about the fact that Maria doesn’t do boys. She breaks the kiss softly and looks at Maria and somehow manages to emphasize the simplicity.  
“You’re welcome,” she says, wanting her partner to know that that was all it was—a gesture. She got over her unrequited feelings a while ago and accepted the platonic state of their partnership. She’s still Maria’s friend and she has her back—even when she finds out why men make Maria uncomfortable and disables the precinct’s punching bag.

The fifth time—and Natasha isn’t counting, but it happens, and it’s happened before and somehow, she’s grateful because she needs it after today. A witness pulled a knife to her throat and she has a scrape above her pulse and she’s been closer to death before but never close enough to see that fierce panic and devastation in Maria’s eyes as the latter was forced to lower her gun.  
A tear flees down her cheek as she pushes Maria against the wall of her apartment—she’s moved in life in terms of living quarters since she met Maria as a seventeen-year-old punk kid who set fires—and presses her lips against Maria’s, moaning. She craves her—after today, denial is pointless and Maria is there in a way no one has ever been, and it’s more than lust but less than love. It’s trust and it’s as unforced as the rough session that tests mortality. After today, they both want to taste each other’s lives between their teeth and breathe in the scent of survival. It’s broken and it’s a physical _thank god I didn’t lose you_ and the reciprocal _I don’t know what I’d done if I had_ , and Natasha sees her own life reflected in Maria’s eyes. There are no words as they pull and push—and that’s what they do; why what they have works. When Maria pushes, Natasha pulls, and there is no other detective who gets what they have is beyond casual teasing and smart comebacks—and yet none of them would be able to explain because that would mean facing facts.  
And so, maybe the tear isn’t just for the near-miss, but for what Natasha knows she also can’t demand of her partner. But she’s grateful that Maria is going to be alright. She also knows that she can’t ever let her know what she’d do to protect her life. That’s why she’s gone before Maria wakes up next morning and faces facts.

The one time it’s Maria who initiates the kiss, it’s two weeks into a serial murder investigation and they have both been sent home after going over sixty-three hours without sleep. Per usual tendency when stressed, Natasha wakes up naked in Maria’s bed with chapped lips. The frustration is still there—there’s a killer on the loose in the streets and the entire Toronto police force are on the hunt for something that preys on the weak and the lonesome. Natasha wakes up with the feeling of ineptitude and tightens her fists in Maria’s sheets, letting go only when her partner’s hands slip around her wrists. In any other, it’d have been force, a restraint. Instead, Natasha looks up and sinks her shoulders. In that moment, she is not the guns-blazing Detective Romanov, uncorrupt yet street-smart with Russian mob affiliation; she is Natasha who feels like screaming at the world until it screams back. Hopeless, she wonders how Maria does it—how any of them do it, really.  
“We should get back,” she says, withdrawing from Maria. Pulling away. Because they both know that they don’t have the time for pleasantries—and beyond that, they both know (think) that they don’t deserve the comforts in life whilst Torontonians are hunted and scared.  
It’s not a command (although Maria technically could pull rank), it’s a request. And had it been any other day, Natasha would have insisted that Maria Hill didn’t do requests, she held demands. Today it’s an admission.  
There’s a shift behind the blue eyes that Natasha has come to know better than her own. Eyes that can be cold as ice in interrogation. Eyes that were warm and caring and encouraging when faced with teen arsonist a decade ago. Eyes that can reveal nothing and convey _everything_.  
Natasha looks into those eyes now with a sense of revelation.  
It’s one word that means three.  
“Stay.” 


	2. One Word That Means Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It starts with "Stay" and ends in "I love you".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is connected with the first drabble and takes place during the time of their relationship.

“Stay.”

It is at least one part giggle, one part corruption. Or maybe Natasha just thinks so because Maria’s hand is currently traveling under her shirt in ways that awake a lazy hunger. All of which Maria Hill is _perfectly_ aware of.

She sighs. Not because she doesn’t _want to—_ Maria was hardly faced frequently with total rejection—but because it’s already 6:30AM and they have places to be. Yet she can’t stop that pleasant tension at the touch of Maria, and the far more intimate reaction to the brunette’s victorious grin.

“No, really, Mar, you _know that_ —“ She sucks in air at the boldness of Maria’s shifting movements, looking at her in slight indignant accusation. A soft moan escapes her lips and she arches her back and makes sure to curse Maria in at least one foreign language.

Forgetting _completely,_ of course, that Maria has been taking classes (and if that wasn’t helping her, having been her partner on and off for seven years might).

“If you’re going to call me _that_ , let me at least _prove_ it.”

If only Maria’s confidence wasn’t so fucking attractive. Natasha isn’t sure if the bedhair and a slightly over-sized t-shirt makes it hotter or not, but she pulls her girlfriend in, refusing to call it defeat.

“It’s late,” she reasons weakly, tucking a strand of hair behind Maria’s ear even as she hovers above her and pulls her in for a kiss.

“When have you ever taken _long_?” deadpans Maria. Or it would have been a deadpan, had the grin on her face not consumed all traces of dry wit. However, her words ring true; Natasha has never been able to conceal her utter self-destructive arousal when it comes to the stage of nakedness and moaning.

“Point made,” she confesses but it doesn’t deter her. In fact, it only makes her grin wider and Maria all the more attractive. She is certain that she could spend an entire morning just looking at the gorgeousness of Maria Hill out of clothes.

Despite Maria’s persuading persistence, Natasha flips her over slowly without urgency, placing kisses of gratitude for existence across Maria’s skin. It’s a vulnerability she has discovered and been permitted; for which she takes all kinds of pleasures and privileges.

“I love you, you know that?” It’s a question but more of an impossibly unquestionable statement. It is a confession reserved for now—Saturday morning in Natasha’s apartment, wearing nothing but nightclothes.

Lips meet. “I know.”

And Natasha is realizing that what she is feeling in this moment is contentment. And it’s the closest thing she has been to casually happy for a while, because in her bedroom, no one can take Maria from her. There are no whipping bullets or sharp impromptu knives. There is just the two of them.

“I love you too.”

It does not come immediately after Natasha’s words but Natasha does not think less of her for it. She knows that it takes immense trust on Maria’s part to even consider the words and so when they fall, even after countless private confessions, it’s a smile that curls to Natasha’s lips.


End file.
